Call for Papers - Cubic number #7 – Design Strategies

2020-12-30

Bridging Strategy from both Business Economics and Design Sciences | Influencing - Management - Capital

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNDP, 2015) has brought into focus tremendous scope for strategic decision-making across the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Developments at this scale are among contributing factors for business leaders to become more forward-thinking, and to cultivate the organization’s strategic and creative capabilities to remain feasible in the long-term (Sardar, 2020; Rohrbeck et al.,2015). Global industry leaders are responding to the zeitgeist that ‘business as usual’ is no longer acceptable when faced with the many challenges in today’s hyper-connected global economy (Gelles & Yaffe-Bellany, 2019), further deepened by a worldwide depression resulting from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the wide-ranging economic impacts associated with the evolving climate crisis. Meanwhile, scholars focused on thinking about the future are devoting more attention toward exploring the question of what constitutes effective organizational processes for a successful long-term direction (cf. Buehring & Liedtka, 2018; Buchanan, 2015); specifically, where design and strategy as intangible assets can be applied to the resolution of strategic organizational problems (Borja de Mozota & Wolff, 2019; Gallego & Calderón, 2020).

Despite the growing challenges of the twenty-first century, design literature offers little guidance on how to build the capacities in support of strategic design and forward-looking decision-making processes. Meanwhile, design problems in terms of business face a double-edged sword: first, they are becoming smaller, more specialized, and on shorter timescales. While on the other hand, wicked problems are increasing in scale, are connected to global supply-chains, with global social, economic, and environmental impacts over larger timescales. Responding to these complexities’ places growing demand on academia from both fields of design management research and strategy. In particular, the conversation around the current economic model which needs changing to tackle the larger systemic problems, which human-centered design alone cannot solve.

To this end, Cubic number 7 examines different lenses and perspectives relevant to the opportunity discovery and decision-making processes, and from which long-term theories and applications of strategic design can emerge. This call is aimed at explicating the advances design as a strategy has achieved with both theoretical and practical issues according to 8 distinct viewpoints:

  • The perspective of power dynamics: “Managing by design” (Gruber, al., 2015) - bridging design principles, and design attitude into the strategy discourse; from designing a corporate identity to sensemaking, systems thinking, purpose, and meaning. How leaders gain influence and establish their legitimacy and identity through strategic design?
  • The perspective of strategic design-driven organizations. What is the scope of design at the strategic decision level in organizations? Description of the job position of the Chief Design Officer or Artistic Director in terms of autonomy and power at the C-Suite executive-level. How strategic are Design Management awards?
  • The perspective of experiences. Strategic design for customer-centricity in How design leadership and design management transform and align seamless customer brand experiences? How UX designers transform organizations' marketing strategies through hybrid efficient, inclusive, digital performance? How Design Thinking drives cultural transformation of customer processes towards a Corporate Social Responsibility [CSR] enterprise, societal empathy, and mission-driven B Corporations' long-term strategies?
  • The perspective of organizational creativity - from the creative design individual to designing a creative culture shared by all in the organization. How design integration transforms human resources management, and talent sourcing? Are designers' skills integrated as strategic new soft skills for managers at all levels?
  • The perspective of disruptive innovation management through ‘user-oriented’ design management, co-design with users, experimentation, collaborative and open innovation. How is strategic design lowering risk management and optimism in front of chaotic situations?
  • The perspective of sustainable competitive advantages - from a variety of technical, technological, and biological sources (biomimicry). Design driving “doughnut economies” ecosystems towards regenerative organizations. How is design as a core competency and long-term resource difficult to imitate?
  • The perspective of financial and intellectual capital value - patents, copyrights, licensing, and brands registered. The value of design strategy in macro- and micro- economics. Why is it that designers are not interested in design value? What are the indicators of the value of design in management and vice versa, the value of management for design at the strategic level?
  • The perspective of strategic foresight – with emphasis on connecting design thinking, futures thinking, anddesign fiction tools as creative processes through visualization and scenario building narratives in support of strategicdecision-making. Strategy arising from new ideas derived from different knowledge areas, actors, and stakeholders in contexts and around organizations, thus illuminating why some organizations are more forward-looking and innovative than

Contributions are open to both scholars and practitioners to theorize, position, and reflect on applications and practices (incl. field theory), thus contributing towards a holistic review of existing principles, frameworks, methods,and tools for assessing strategic design capabilities, and how they have transitioned in ways design is utilized for strategic purposes inside organizations. Understanding the many challenges concerning the strategic decision-making processes of organizations, insights will further contribute to a strategic design research agenda and meta-model to advance strategic organizational capabilities, and how these can be successfully managed to guidedesigners and organizations having to deal with the many twenty-first-century challenges they face.

Two forms of contribution are possible: (a) academically positioned papers up to 5000  words (excluding references) that exemplify research based on explorations into Design Strategy and (b) process-driven exemplifications thathighlight emergent Design Strategy practices that constitute a procedural and visually based contribution in the form of pictorials and videos. All contributions will be double-blind peer reviewed.

Authors are to follow submission criteria for each contribution type as described on the cubicjournal.org website. Finalsubmissions have to be made by 1 April 2021, at noon, Hong Kong Time to editors[at]cubicjournal.org and joern.buehring[at]polyu.edu.hk. To ensure that contributions receive duly consideration, the submitting author is to include ‘CUBIC Design Strategy’ in the email header.

Issue Editors

Joern Buehring (HKPOLYU), Brigitte Borja de Mozota (UQAM Montreal), Patricia Moore (MooreDesign Phoenix) 

Reference

Boland Jr, Richard J., et al. "Managing as designing: lessons for organization leaders from the design practice of Frank O. Gehry." Design issues 24.1 (2008): 10-25.

Borja de Mozota, B. B., & Wolff, F. (2019). Forty Years of Research in Design Management: A Review of Literature and Directions for the Future. Strategic Design Research Journal, 12(1), 4-26.

Borja de Mozota, B. B. (1998). Structuring Strategic Design Management: Michael Porter's Value Chain. Design Management Journal, 9(2), 26–31.

Buchanan, R. (2015). Worlds in the making: Design, management, and the reform of organizational culture. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 1(1), 5-21.

Buehring, J., & Bishop, P. C. (2020). Foresight and Design: New Support for Strategic Decision Making. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 6(3), 408-432.

Buehring, J. H., & Liedtka, J. (2018). Embracing systematic futures thinking at the intersection of Strategic Planning, Foresight and Design. Journal of innovation management, 6(3), 134-152

Buehring, J. H., & Moore, P. (2018). Emotional and Social Intelligence as ‘Magic Key’in Innovation: A Designer’s call toward inclusivity for all. Journal of Innovation Management, 6(2), 6-12.

Gallego, C., Mejía, G. M., & Calderón, G. (2020). Strategic design: origins and contributions to intellectual capital in organizations. Journal of Intellectual Capital, ahead-of-print

GA, U. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Division for Sustainable Development Goals: New York, NY, USA.

Gelles, D., & Yaffe-Bellany, D. (2019, Aug. 19). Shareholder Value is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say. The New York Times, Accessed on 20.12.2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/business/business-roundtable-ceos-corporations.html

Gruber, M., De Leon, N., George, G., & Thompson, P. (2015). Managing by design. Academy of Management Journal, 58(1), 1-7

Heskett, J. (2009). Creating economic value by design. International Journal of Design.

Holland, R., & Lam, B. (2014). Managing Strategic Design. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Huppatz, D. J. (2015). Revisiting Herbert Simon's “science of design”. Design Issues, 31(2), 29-40.

Kumar, V., & Holloway, M. (2009). How tangible is your strategy? How design thinking can turn your strategy into reality. Journal of Business Strategy.

Leavy, B. (2012). Collaborative innovation as the new imperative–design thinking, value co‐creation and the power of “pull”. Strategy & Leadership.

Manzini, E. (Ed.). 1999. Proceedings First International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing: Strategic design for sustainability: towards a new mix of products and services: IEEE Computer Society.

Meroni, A. (2008). Strategic design: where are we now? Reflection around the foundations of a recent discipline. Strategic Design Research Journal, 1(1), 31–38.

Noble, C. H. (2011). On Elevating Strategic Design Research*. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(3), 389–393.

Quayle, M. (2017). Design Leadership: Strategic Design method: Ask, Try, Do. Columbia Business School Publishing. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sardar, Z. (2010). Welcome to postnormal times. Futures, 42(5), 435-444.

Schön, D. A. (1990). The design process. Varieties of thinking: Essays from Harvard’s philosophy of education research center, 111-141.

Senge, P. M. (2014). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. Crown, 14 May 2014

United Nations Development Programme. Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. (n.p.: UNDP, 2015), available from sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030 Agenda for Sustainable Development web.pdf

Verganti, R. (2008). Design, meanings, and radical innovation: A metamodel and a research agenda. Journal of product innovation management, 25(5), 436-456.

Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual review of psychology, 50(1), 361-386.

Windahl, C., Karpen, I. O., & Wright, M. R. (2020). Strategic design: orchestrating and leveraging market-shaping capabilities. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, ahead-of-print

Wolff, F., & Amaral, F. G. (2016). Design Management competencies, process and strategy: A multidimensional approach to a Conceptual Model. Strategic Design Research Journal, 9(3).

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Cubic Journal

ISSN: 2589-7098 (Print)

ISSN: 2589-7107 (Online)